Related papers: Volatile Sample Return in the Solar System
The Earth possesses many environmental extremes that mimic conditions on extraterrestrial worlds. The stratosphere at 30-40 km altitude closely resembles the surface of Mars in terms of pressure, temperature, and radiation levels (UV,…
In current models used to interpret exoplanet atmospheric observations, the planet mass is treated as a prior and is estimated independently with external methods, such as RV or TTV techniques. This approach is necessary as available…
Earth's volatile elements (H, C, and N) are essential to maintaining habitable conditions for metazoans and simpler life forms. However, identifying the sources (comets, meteorites, and trapped nebular gas) that supplied volatiles to Earth…
The next decade of survey astronomy has the potential to transform our knowledge of variable stars. Stellar variability underpins our knowledge of the cosmological distance ladder, and provides direct tests of stellar formation and…
Returning humans to the Moon presents an unprecedented opportunity to determine the origin of volatiles stored in the permanently shaded regions (PSRs), which trace the history of lunar volcanic activity, solar wind surface chemistry, and…
Polarized scattering in planetary atmospheres is computed in the context of exoplanets. The problem of polarized radiative transfer is solved for a general case of absorption and scattering, while Rayleigh and Mie polarized scattering are…
Small bodies are the remnant building blocks from the time when the planets formed and migrated to their current positions. Their volatile composition and relative abundances serve as time capsules for the formation conditions in the…
Dynamical sampling refers to a class of problems in which space-time samples are taken from a signal evolving under an underlying dynamical system. The goal is to use these samples to recover relevant information about the system, such as…
Exoplanetary science continues to excite and surprise with its rich diversity. We discuss here some key aspects potentially influencing the range of exoplanetary terrestrial-type atmospheres which could exist in nature. We are motivated by…
The search for extraterrestrial life has long been a primary focus of scientific exploration, driven by rapid advancements in technology and our understanding of the universe. The discovery of water on Mars has sparked significant interest,…
We consider the task of monitoring spatiotemporal phenomena in real-time by deploying limited sampling resources at locations of interest irrevocably and without knowledge of future observations. This task can be modeled as an instance of…
Mars is the Solar System's canonical small, rocky planet that transitioned from early geologic activity and surface liquid water to a cold and arid planet with a thin, cold, CO$_2$-dominated atmosphere. The evolution of Mars, in the context…
Orbital resonances are ubiquitous in the Solar system. They play a decisive role in the long term dynamics, and in some cases the physical evolution, of the planets and of their natural satellites, as well as the evolution of small bodies…
Mars is the next destination after Earth to support terrestrial life. Decades of Mars exploration has fascinated space explorers to endeavour for a human expedition. But human Mars enterprise is complicated than conventional mission as the…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Causal discovery can be a powerful tool for investigating causality when a system can be observed but is inaccessible to experiments in practice. Despite this, it is rarely used in any scientific or medical fields. One of the major hurdles…
In this paper, we employ a Bayesian approach to uncertainty quantification of computer simulations used to assess the probability of rare events. As a case study, we assess the reliability of an Earth reentry capsule for sample return…
Several distant icy worlds have atmospheres that are in vapor-pressure equilibrium with their surface volatiles, including Pluto, Triton, and, probably, several large KBOs near perihelion. Studies of the volatile and thermal evolution of…
Definition of habitability depends on the organisms under consideration. One way to determine habitability of some environment is to compare its certain parameters to environments where extremophilic micro-organisms thrive on Earth. We can…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…